GOODBYE, CABLE TV: 2.3 Million Americans Have Pulled The Plug Since 2010

This chart (below) from ISI Group tells you all you need to know about
the fate of cable TV in the age of the iPad: Since Q1 2010, 2.3 million people have
stopped their cable video subscriptions from companies such as
Cablevision, Comcastand Time Warner Cable; many switched to
broadband provided by telco companies or satellite TV operators.

Currently, there are only 41.5 million U.S. cable video
subscribers.

I've been arguing for a while now that Americans are on the cusp
of a dramatic change in how they watch video. They're moving to
video over the internet.
Traditional TV is dying, in much the same way that in the
mid-2000s we all largely stopped using hardwired telephones to
make calls in favor of wireless mobile cellphones.

Hardwired phones are still a big business, of course, and most
households still have them. But they're really a vestigial
offshoot of whatever bundled communications package you've
bought.

It looks like cable is about to go the same way. Although its
subscriber numbers are dwindling, subscriber numbers for
satellite TV and broadband phone/internet service remain
relatively healthy, as the second chart (below) shows. That
suggests to me that there is a growing number of households
choosing a broadband package with the internet as their top
priority, and a dwindling number choosing it based on TV.

Ironically, the fall has come at a time when
cable is making more ad money than ever. It's a
supply-and-demand issue: It may be that cable TV's audience is
dwindling, but it's still one of the few venues that reliably
delivers millions of eyeballs all at once.

First, the cable TV chart, based on numbers from ISI Group:

Here's the market share situation. Note that 2011 was a threshold
year, when cable slipped from having more than 50 percent of the
market to less: